


Joan and Sherlock vs the robot dinosaur

by damnmydooah



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Gen, Pursuit, robot dinosaur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:31:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7466991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnmydooah/pseuds/damnmydooah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Does what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joan and Sherlock vs the robot dinosaur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dracothelizard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracothelizard/gifts).



> Dracothelizard wanted me to write a story about Joan and Sherlock encountering a robot dinosaur. So I did. It's all their fault.
> 
> Also I have a terrible need to make Watson and Holmes touch. A lot. All the touching. It's because they barely do so on the show and I grew up on a steady diet of The X-Files where everything was about the touching all the time and just. The touching. I need it.

“What the hell is that?!” Joan peers at the looming shape at the other end of the hallway as Sherlock fumbles in his pockets for a flashlight. Seconds later, the beam bounces off a shiny, mottled green metal.

“I do believe that’s a mechanical dinosaur, Watson.” Sherlock sounds remarkably nonplussed for someone confronted by what indeed appears to be a robotic T.rex, albeit a slightly smaller version than the real thing.

Joan wants to ask what a robot dinosaur is doing on the second-floor hallway of a warehouse in Queens, but before she can get the first syllable out, the machine comes to life with a metallic roar and advances upon them, gaining speed. Sherlock pulls on her arm.

“As fascinating as both the creature itself and its reason for being here are, I think perhaps it might be time to run!” Still holding her wrist, Sherlock sets off for the stairs, some fifty yards away. Unable to look away from the dinosaur, Joan runs backwards for several steps before she is forced to turn around. Her wrist slips out of Sherlock's grasp. The dinosaur is remarkably fast and is now less than twenty yards away.

Sherlock pauses at the top of the stairs. “Do hurry up, Watson.” He is making a valiant effort at keeping his voice steady, but his hunched shoulders and the wild look in his eyes betray his anxiety. “If we can just make it down the stairs I’m sure we’ll be fine. I don’t think this creature was designed to navigate these steps.” When Joan finally reaches him, he grabs her wrist again. She suspects it’s as much for his own comfort as for hers.

Together, they make their way down the stairs, back to the open space of the first floor of the warehouse. Sunlight pours in through the large windows and they can hear birds singing outside. For a few seconds, everything seems perfectly normal, and they aren’t investigating a human trafficking ring which somehow employs a large metal facsimile of a long-extinct beast as a security device.

Sherlock lets go of Joan’s wrist and starts to speak, but is immediately interrupted by a deafening roar coming from the top of the stair. As they look, they realize the sound has not, in fact, come from the creature’s mouth, but rather from the complicated machinery in its hind legs, which have moved to become almost completely compacted. The T.rex is now in a crouch, looking down at them with cold, unblinking eyes. Its metal components scream as it readjusts its stance. Joan has an alarming thought.

“Sherlock, you don’t think...”

Sherlock shakes his head, but he doesn’t look too sure of himself. “It would be a remarkable feat of robotics. I’m not sure anybody in the field is even capable of that yet.”

“I don’t think the person who built this regularly publishes in the professional journals. Sherlock, I swear to God, I think it’s going to -”

With another metallic roar, the T.rex smoothly extends its hind legs and propels its body forward. For a second, it seems to hover in the air, but then it starts rapidly descending, heading straight for them.

This time, Joan grabs Sherlock’s hand.

The machine lands with an ear-splitting crunch, and for a second, Joan thinks gravity may have won out. But then it seems to shake itself and, with a focus that is uncanny for something that isn’t even supposed to be alive, starts pursuing them again.

As they run across the open space, back towards the entrance, they hear the heavy metal footfalls of the machine behind them. They seem impossibly loud and fast. Glancing behind her, Joan sees the sunlight glinting off the long rows of teeth in the beast’s mouth, off the three long claws at the end of its short arms.

Thirty more yards until they reach the door. Joan is glad for all her mornings spent running. The pump of her legs, regulating her breath; it all comes natural to her. It helps to dispel some of the panic she felt at the sight of the T.rex’s talons.

Twenty yards. Except something is off. As they’d entered not more than half an hour ago, they’d left the large doors standing open. However, the sunlight that is coming through the large windows fails to appear where the open doors on their left should be. Sherlock has evidently noticed the same thing, as he suddenly sharply veers off to the right.

“Back door!” he shouts by way of explanation. Behind them, the T.rex is gaining.

On the other side of the warehouse floor, a short hallway leads to a set of thin plywood doors. Joan and Sherlock burst through it, into a small courtyard. An alleyway leads back to the street. The courtyard is empty except for a messy stack of pallets in one corner. In the alleyway, a red bicycle is leaning up against the wall.

Sherlock makes a dash for the pallets. “Quick, Watson!” Together, they manage to shift the stack to partly block the doors. Less than a second later, the doors shake as the T.rex throws itself against them. The top pallet slides off the stack, landing at their feet.

And then it’s quiet.

Catching their breath, shoulders pressed together, Joan and Sherlock regard the doors. Nothing happens.

Then the doors shake again as one of them splinters in half, the machine’s claws rending the thin wood. It rips the other doors off its hinges and throws it down on the ground, pushing against the stack of pallets, which quickly give way.

The only way out is through the alleyway. Joan briefly hoped that it might be too narrow for the T.rex to navigate, but she sees now that it will fit just fine. As they start running again, Sherlock grabs the unlocked bicycle by the handlebars and drags it with him. At Joan’s quizzical look, he explains: “I once read that these large dinosaurs were not actually very fast. It said you should be able to outrun it on a bicycle.”

“You realize this isn’t an actual dinosaur, right? Whoever built it was probably not concerned with replicating the actual strength and speed of a T.rex.”

Sherlock gives her a look. “Do you have a better idea?”

“Not unless there’s a bazooka in this alley somewhere.”

They reach the street side of the alleyway just as the T.rex comes careening into it on the other side. It smashes against the wall and is briefly shaken off balance, but it soon rights itself and continues its pursuit.

Luckily, this particular industrial part of Queens does not usually get any foot traffic, and even the street is deserted as Sherlock mounts the bicycle and pushes off.

“Jump on!” he yells, as Joan attempts to overturn a trash can to block their pursuer. She sprints after him, grabs him around the waist and jumps up on the bike’s baggage carrier, both her legs dangling off to the side.

“Please don’t squeeze too hard, I’m ticklish,” Sherlock says over his shoulder. She adjusts so she can link her hands across his stomach, her cheek pressed against his back. Sherlock’s legs are pumping overtime, until he finds the bike’s gear shift. As they speed away, Joan looks behind her to see the T.rex come skidding out of the alleyway and adjust to the right to follow them.

“How does it keep doing that? How does it know where we are?”

“I ruminated on that,” says Sherlock, and Joan wonders when in the past five minutes he’s had time to ruminate on anything. “I would posit that it is either equipped with motion sensors and some sort of software that captures and remembers the initial objects sensed, or...” He pauses to catch his breath, biking up a slight incline in the street.

“Or?” Joan prompts.

“Or it’s simple, Watson. It’s equipped with a camera and is remote controlled.”

Of course, thinks Joan. It probably really is that simple. The fact that the machine looks so alert, so real, so _alive_ , is because, in a sense, it is. Its soul is whoever is behind its controls.

“So how do we get rid of it?”

“Never fear Watson, for I have a plan! Notice where we are.”

“Willets Point?”

“Indeed! And what kind of traffic mostly populates Willets Point?”

“Sherlock, there is no traffic! It’s just us and a deranged robot dinosaur out to kill us! We need the police, and their guns, so they can shoot it. A lot.”

The pounding of the T.rex’s feet is relentless behind them. It might not be gaining on them, but Joan is sure that the machine will outlast even Sherlock’s stamina. Maybe if she jumps off the bike, he’ll have a chance to get away, get Marcus and Captain Gregson. Maybe those women will stand a chance. She starts to unlink her hands across Sherlock’s stomach. In the next moment, his large hand is covering both of hers.

“Hold on just a little longer, dear Watson. It won’t be long now.” He gives her hands a quick squeeze, returns his own back to the handlebar. They crest another small hill, and as they start the decline, Watson begins hearing the sounds of traffic. Remembering Sherlock’s earlier question, she looks around.

“Trucks!” Above her, Sherlock nods. “So how are you...” As she is asking him, the answer comes to her. And sure enough, when she peeks around him, she can see that they are approaching an intersection, and that the traffic she heard just now consists mostly of the trucks driving their wares from one end of the neighborhood to the other. Trucks that are large and fast, and probably a good deal heavier than the metal T.rex. But that also means they are a good deal larger and heavier than she and Sherlock are...

Sherlock shifts gears again, picking up even more speed. With less than twenty yards to go, the light on the intersection turns red. Joan presses her face into Sherlock’s back, breathing open-mouthed against the fabric of his coat. Up ahead, she can hear the trucks speeding past.

She looks up when she feels Sherlock stop pedaling, and finds them flying through the intersection. They are crossing a two-lane, one-way street, but it feels like traffic is everywhere. She feels as if she’s gone momentarily deaf, as though all her brain can focus on is her sense of sight. She sees and instantly registers five different cars and trucks, noting their make, model, and color. She has a feeling she will remember them forever.

In the next moment, they are through, and everything comes rushing back: she hears the loud klaxons of the trucks, feels the rough fabric of Sherlock’s coat against her face, feels her heart beating in her chest. And then comes the sound they’ve been waiting for: the loud metallic stomping of the robot dinosaur. Joan looks behind her just in time to see an impressively large truck, the logo on its side something black with an orange streak, plowing into the machine.

The T.rex doesn’t stand a chance. It is torn asunder by the truck’s large wheels, its metal body being crushed under the pressure. For a second, it seems as if the truck won’t even stop, but then the driver hits the brakes as the rest of the traffic in the intersection also comes to a screeching halt. Miraculously, there are no other collisions.

Sherlock brings the bike to a stop and they both get off on slightly wobbly legs. They stay standing close together as the police show up, Captain Gregson is notified. Marcus comes to take their statements, that familiar look on his face that says he can’t believe they got into another one of _these_ situations. After twenty minutes, he tells them to go home and take it easy. Sherlock reaches for the bicycle.

“Shall we, Watson?”

Joan regards the bike. “One request, though.”

Sherlock raises his eyebrows in a question.

“Can I ride on the handlebars?”

“By all means, Watson,” Sherlock smiles, making room for her, “hop on.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Oops they stole a bike.


End file.
